*BSD News Article 87827


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From: conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier)
Newsgroups: neosoft.users.freebsd,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Free BSD trouble
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 97 06:40:00 GMT
Organization: What?  Me, organize?
Lines: 68
Message-ID: <5cpfsk$fqk@uuneo.neosoft.com>
References: <32EAF919.17A0@neosoft.com> <5cflae$gal@bonkers.taronga.com>
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In article <5cflae$gal@bonkers.taronga.com>, peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote:
>In article <32EAF919.17A0@neosoft.com>,
>Matthew Hall  <mhall@neosoft.com> wrote:
>>Anyone have any suggestions?
>
>Buy the 2.1.6 CDROM from Walnut Creek. It's just out, it's the end point of
>the current "-stable" development line, and it's got the latest drivers.
>
>Buy it as a "subscription" and it's $25, and you can cancel your sub after
>one disc if you want.

Not sure that'll solve his problems, Peter.

I just got the 2.1.6 CD-ROM and, among other things, it:

o <sigh> As usual, the same as with every previous version of FreeBSD I've 
  used (since 2.1.0), still refuses to recognize the same IDE CD-ROM drive 
  that Windows 95 has no problem whatsoever dealing with (thanks to a   
  vendor-supplied driver, of course).  In earlier versions I did manage to     
  tweak the kernel config later, *after* installing, but *during* the   
  install the CD-ROM was useless

o Will not startup the install process from CD-ROM under DOS as described in 
  the docs, thereby bypassing the need for creating a boot floppy (again, 
  mainly because my BIOS does not correspond enough in every exact detail   
  with those of the authors)

o Will not even do the install from a DOS partition (distribution files copied 
  from CD-ROM to a DOS hard drive), if said partition is greater than roughly  
  512 MB.  FreeBSD *still* can't deal with DOS partitions beyond this limit.

o Oh, and of course, my sound card *still* didn't work, either.

Frankly, I find the latest release a major letdown.  And I do mean *major*.  
After jumping through more hoops than you'd care to imagine just to get 
anything at all in the way of an upgrade to occur with this latest release, 
what happened?  After installing XFree86 3.2, my system was most 
unceremoniously rebooted, after which I discovered, much to my unpleasant 
surprise, that my kernel (along with bin, sbin, etc, and a few other things) 
could no longer be found in the root slice.

So, how does one install a kernel, using a disc that is unuseable from any 
operating system one currently has running?

Answer?  One doesn't.  One sends said disk back to manufacturer, requesting 
refund and cancellation of subscription to automatic upgrade service.

And please don't *even* mention "SCSI".  I'm not about to rush out and spend 
wads of money just to accomodate an operating system (alright, many people 
*did* do just that for Win95, but that's different).

So long, FreeBSD!  Windows 95, you get an extra 3 gigs of hard drive!

Maybe later, folks.  It's been interesting, I'll say that.  But I don't need 
this aggravation.  Life's too short.

I *will* miss it.

But sorry.  Let me know when you've ironed out all the kinks.

Best wishes.


-- 
Conrad Sabatier      |  Microsoft Windows 3.x/95/NT users:
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